1. Field of the Invention
This invention generally relates to a method for processing a color image, and, in particular, to a color image processing method particularly suitable for application to an image sensor including an array of photoelectric elements each of which is provided with one of a predetermined number of color-separating filters.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Japanese Patent Laid-open Pub. No. 60-187180, which is hereby incorporated by reference, discloses a color image processing method, according to which, use is made of a dichroic prism and an image is focused on three CCDs to obtain a color signal. However, according to this method, it is difficult to completely eliminate a color abberation of an image forming optical system. Besides, a point on an original image is not focused exactly on the corresponding position of each of the three CCDs. As a result, the color balance of an image signal thus obtained is somewhat distorted. In addition, the positional adjustment of each of the three CCDs is extremely difficult, and there are also other disadvantages, such as a large number of parts and high cost.
On the other hand, according to the teachings of Japanese Patent Laid-open Pub. No. 61-61561, which is also hereby incorporated by reference, three filters for red, green and blue colors are provided in a predetermined arrangement for an array of photoelectric elements. With this structure, disadvantages of difficulty in positional adjustments and cost for parts may be obviated; however, since the red, green and blue filters are shifted in position from one another, the data at the same point of an original cannot be read by these photoelectric elements at the same time, so that there is a disadvantage of incapability to carry out "color correction processing" and "undercolor removal (UCR) processing", which are prerequisites for a digital color copier.